Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/367

 boo railing, but otherwise open on all four sides, so as to afford the spectators an unobstructed view of all that goes forward within the enclosure. A palu- leaf roof protects the players from the sun by day and from the heavy dews by night; and whenever a panggong is erected upon a new site, the pawang, or medicine-man, who is also the actor-manager of the troupe, performs certain magic rites with cheap in- cense and other unsavoury offering to the spirits. This he does in order to enlist the assistant of the demons of the earth and air, and of all local deities, whom he entreats to watch over his people and to guard them from harm. The incantations of which he makes use are very ancient, and it is possible to trace in some of them a strong Hindu influence, but for the rest, the whole business is pure devil worship.

First he calls upon Black Awang, King of the Earth and Air, he who is wont to wander through the veins of the ground and to take his rest at the portals of the world. Awang, of course, is one of the common- est of Malayan proper names, and here it is obviously used as an euphemism substituted for a word which it is not lawful for men to utter. Next the pawang calls upon the Holy Ones, the local demons of the place, and finally upon his grandsire, Pětěra Gûru, the Teacher who is from the Beginning, who is incarnate from his birth, who dwells as a hermit in the recesses of the moon, and practises bis magic arts in the womb of the sun; the Teacher whose coat is wrought of green beads, whose blood is white, who hath but a single bone, the hairs of whose body stand